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  • image Adam vol.56/120
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Reference number

Adam vol.56/120

Purpose

Capriccio showing a ruined circular colonnade of the Corinthian order with a broken and overgrown cornice. Beside it is a pyramid and in front of that is a circular altar-sarcophagus.

Aspect

Perspective

Inscribed

Inscribed in ink 80; in red ink 120

Signed and dated

  • Undated, probably 1756 or 1757.

Medium and dimensions

Pencil, pen, grey and brown washes272 x 206, all 4 corners trimmed diagonally

Hand

Charles-Louis Clérisseau (attributed to)

Verso

Unfinished capriccio in pencil of a circular pilastered building with flanking colonnade.

Notes

A similar circular colonnade with sarcophagus appears in Adam vol.56/89 in a different composition. The inspiration for both drawings could have been the Temple of Vesta (Sybil) at Tivoli, which both Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Robert Adam - and many others - frequently drew (see Adam vol.57/159, and Clerk Collection, Scotland, Clerk 192). The pyramid may be based on that of Cestius in Rome and appears in other drawings in this volume, for examle 56/69. This drawing is either unfinished or has been altered, having one or more figures roughed out in pencil on a pedestal to the left of the building.There is a copy of this drawing by C J Richardson (1806-1871) in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (P&D 93.G.8/37).

Level

Drawing

Exhibition history

The Adam Brothers in Rome: Drawings from the Grand Tour, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 25 September 2008 - 14 February 2009

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).